It’s puzzling that it took this long for a deal like this to be struck. This is basically what Carl Levin has been offering for months – repeal with a delayed implementation. Perhaps the White House realized the damage they would incur if they did not push repeal after announcing it with great fanfare in the State of the Union address.

While those who monitor the live feed of the oil spill are debating whether the flow worsened on Sunday, the sad reality of what Gulf residents now face is driven home by the fact that along with weather forecasts, forecasts of the oil spread are now a daily event. Television station WKRG in Mobile, Alabama now hosts the spill live web cam, but also is posting a daily “Oil Forecast”.

The vote today provides an opportunity to see, in full view, who supports consumer protections and who supports auto dealers getting a free pass. Public Citizen, one of the pro-reform groups working on this effort, has a guide to which members of the Senate would be most likely to support the auto dealers on this one. And an interesting name tops the list. . . .

The dispersant chemicals in use to break up the BP oil spill have been approved for use by the EPA but haven’t been tested to see if they degrade into endocrine disruptors. Not only does that mean we can’t choose a less toxic dispersant in time of emergency. But it also means this stuff is already being used, with no clear idea of the consequences of its use. Should we be using them at all?

Dem. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is weathering last week’s revelations that he fudged some accounts of his Vietnam-era military service, his campaign’s internal poll shows. One other poll finds a different result.

By the end of this week, we should know whether Congress will make a play to end the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy on gay service members, or whether they’ll allow continued discrimination in our nation’s armed forces.

I realize there’s a danger in looking at the dollars involved in federal royalties and drilling. It suggests there is a market price to put on potentially destroying the Gulf. But it highlights the way that oil companies are screwing Americans the same way they screw residents of oil countries around the world.

Just common sense, people! I mean, what kind of brain-dead idiot would actually predict on national television that the Republican candidate would beat a Democrat in a conservative district that John McCain and Sarah Palin won in 2008!? You’d really have to be some brainless half-wit lamestream media talking head to say something like that.

What so-called “purists” actually believe is that these groups should not be raising money from the public to act as watchdogs of the oil companies, and then take money from the oil companies to rubber stamp their green washing efforts and shield them from criticism when they richly deserve it.

In other words, no scamming.

Enthusiasm for the new health care law is trending down, a poll shows. It’s hard to stay excited about a plan that doesn’t take effect until 2014.